Apologies aside, ACA needs more time

November 10, 2013

President Obama apologized, sort of, this past week for telling people they could keep their health plans under the new Affordable Care Act, when he knew the rules would force millions of policies t......

Comments

Reason2Puke

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, health insurance rates are skyrocketing. Why? Well, you know, there is a glitch in the online system. Those unforeseen glitches can be very expensive. Rest assured that the 40,000,000 uninsured will soon be covered by their rightful blanket of protection.

In a completely unrelated story. President Obama pushes hard for immigration reform. Upwards of 20,000,000 residents living in the U.S. illegally, who use the emergency room as their primary care doctors in many cases, need to be made legal to avail themselves of our newest and shiniest right, the ACA. If 40 mil. uninsured are going to cost us $270 billion a year more to cover, my math tells me that 20 mil. new citizens will cost an additional $135 billion annually. That is $405 billion, or about $5,000 extra per year for every working American. Now that, my friends, is truly affordable care.

Reason2Puke

I was not aware of the bodies piling up due to the United States healthcare system. I am, however, aware of the FACT that we have by far the best cancer survival rates of any other country in the world. That is a tiny statistic that is left out when ranking our overall healthcare system 37th in the world.

Fischer

the cancer survival rates are from 2012 or earlier. They have nothing to do with obamacare/universal coverage. Unless you are saying our system before obamacare was the reason for the high rates of cancer patients surviving. In which case why would we would it be a good thing to go to obamacare?

Reason2Puke

I was saying that our cancer survival rates are higher because we have the best healthcare system in the world. The Obamacare lovers always claim that we are ranked lower in the world than many of the socialized medicine countries. That is because they skew the statistics by taking cancer survival out of the equation. Obamacare can ONLY make our quality of healthcare worse, and it won't even accomplish its stated purpose which is to "cover all Americans".

MNcommonsense

The "world's best healthcare system" had many issues long before the Affordable Care Act. Just look at the explosion in costs and insurance premiums from 1990-2012. Just look at the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy due to medical debt. Just look at the decades increase in uninsured Americans, especially children. Just look at the increasing number of U.S. businesses removing healthcare as an employee benefit. Just look at an American healthcare system where insurance companies dictate who lives and who dies.

And what did the 8 years of the George W. Bush administration do when they were in leadership on these issues (crickets, crickets, crickets)?

Where is the Republican plan! We need to hear a Republican plan! Please give us some leadership! Please show us that there are more than empty vessels sitting on our politicians heads! Stop the obstructions and grab the bull by the horns and be leaders with a plan!

Avoice

Mncommonsense - you have made an old argument again. The Reps had plans but when you have a party who controls both the House and the Senate and control the presidency, any plan put forth by anyone not in conformity with the leadership will never see the light of day, heard by any committee nor pass out of any committee. Remember the health care summit when the majority and minority leadership of Congress met with the President and the answer given to any suggestions or improvements was "I won". Do some research as some Rep doctors from the House and Senate offered amendments which were voted down. I would start with your own Senators from MN - who offered the medical device tax, got it in the plan, and have tried twice to get it delayed for several years. IMHO, a lot of brains were never used in crafting this plan, but a lot of craftiness and deceit were put in by a lot of people who know nothing about healthcare but the control of and mandate to people.

Avoice

Mncommmonsense, I might remind you healthcare in the 1990's is far different than today. Had you had some of the diseases and health problems we have today then - say a heart attack at a young age, you might not have survived. Well, today, you have a much better chance of survival and be able to lead a productive life. We no longer practice the "throwaway method" but practice the "cure and survival method". Medical devices have improved to help diagnose many health problems in an early stage. Those solutions don't come inexpensively. Cars of the 1990's have been improved to those of today and you can't buy a 2014 at a 1990 price. It is all relevant, the more you have to pay, the better the product.

Fischer

I would argue the reason our health care cost have increased dramatically is because doctors can save many more people who have diseases. 30 years ago those people would have died from those diseases, accidents and even premature babies.

JReader

Just how did Bush pull the wool over Congress' eyes to get them to go along with his war plans ? Even John Kerry supported it until later when he ran for president then was against it.

Bush was at least bright enough to get the Democrats to sign on to his Iraq scheme - more than you can say for Obama and his healthcare takeover - there, I can be bi-partisan too...

Obama could be sharing some of the ownership of this debacle with the Republicans if he only let them get involved when it was being drafted. Of course his ego could never let that happen so today he has to go it alone with all of his apologies for the mess he's made. Bush was at least bright enough to garner bi-partisan support for his Iraq fiasco. That doesn't say much about Obama's ability to lead.

Reason2Puke

In our post-constitution society we have created a world where our elected officials, and especially our president, are perceived as being powerful in an of themselves. Their power and authority is supposed to be derived from the governed, not from the Washington power brokers. Obamacare will continue to be forced upon us and the political elites believe that there is nothing we can do about it. I guess we will see.

JReader

Obama's approval rating has sunk to a point where he is now equal to where George Bush was after Hurricane Katrina. At least average Americans can assess Obama's performance more objectively than Sven.

Even the Democrats in Congress are turning tail and running away from Obamacare and it's namesake.

Many Democrats want to support the legislation to enable people to keep their current coverage. The problem with that is if this happens Obamacare falls apart. In order for it to work they needed to hike the rates so the healthy would pay for the unhealthy. Obama really painted himself into a corner with his lie. His options are to either force those 15 million people into more expensive plans with coverage that many won't need, or allow them to keep it by grandfathering them in and then the whole scheme unravels. His lie is really biting him in the back side.

Reason2Puke

Avoice

Svensota has always applied a name to Speaker Boehner which, at this point in time, clearly fits our President Obama. The President has evidently been successful in dividing the country, dividing the politics of the country, divided the peoples by race and color, and has now made a shambles in destroying 1/6th of our economy. The Dems and Libs have been successful in elevating a community agitator to the level of country agitator. The President says he has a fix for the 5 million cancelled policy holders which he told them repeatedly you can keep your plan. Well, he repeated that promise of keeping your plan 27+ times for which we find out was not true - so how can we believe him now? By the way, the Federal chief IT man testified he can't guarantee the website will be up and operating to it's full capacity Nov 30th. They are only able to fix 6 out of 10 "glitches".